Steve Harmison

[GIMH]

You could argue that his injury woes are partially down to poor fitness on his part, though

 

[wfdu_ben91]

Hopefully the selecters are stupid enough not to pick Harmison because he'll cause our batsman far more problems then Broad will. Harmison's troubled our best batsman in the past, Ricky Ponting and our inform batsman Phillip Hughes and I don't see Broad causing any problems for these two.

 

[Redbacks]

The Australians apparently thought Harmison was bowling well in 2005 too - he still made sod-all contribution to the four matches England dominated.

He made the captian draw blood and didn't show any concern, set the tone which puts his name in the forefront of the mind when looking for a key moment in the series.

 

[howardj]

Hopefully the selecters are stupid enough not to pick Harmison because he'll cause our batsman far more problems then Broad will. Harmison's troubled our best batsman in the past, Ricky Ponting and our inform batsman Phillip Hughes and I don't see Broad causing any problems for these two.

Agreed.

Ask the Aussies who they would least like in the team on Wednesday. I bet they mention Harmison before Onions and Broad. That doesn't mean that the latter two are useless; just that Harmison should be picked ahead of them.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

I don't really see what the poms are complaining about. If Harmison takes 1-60 and that one wicket is Hughes cheaply then it's better then having Hughes flay the rest of the England bowlers to all parts and play a brilliant knock that seperates the two teams.

 

[zaremba]

Hopefully the selecters are stupid enough not to pick Harmison because he'll cause our batsman far more problems then Broad will. Harmison's troubled our best batsman in the past, Ricky Ponting and our inform batsman Phillip Hughes and I don't see Broad causing any problems for these two.

Maybe. We'll see. Broad had too much for Sarwan recently, with intelligent aggressive fast bowling - exactly the sort of stuff we wish Harmison could produce more regularly.

 

[zaremba]

I don't really see what the poms are complaining about. If Harmison takes 1-60 and that one wicket is Hughes cheaply then it's better then having Hughes flay the rest of the England bowlers to all parts and play a brilliant knock that seperates the two teams.

A slight overstatement. If your fast bowler takes 1-60 in every innings, he will be rightly dropped, even if the wicket he gets is a top-order player. Hughes is a really good prospect and was in great form until recently but I don't think England will be, or should be, quite as worried about him as you seem to think. You may also be underestimating the rest of the England attack, which is pretty decent.

 

[fredfertang]

He made the captian draw blood and didn't show any concern, set the tone which puts his name in the forefront of the mind when looking for a key moment in the series.

An excellent point

 

[wfdu_ben91]

Maybe. We'll see. Broad had too much for Sarwan recently, with intelligent aggressive fast bowling - exactly the sort of stuff we wish Harmison could produce more regularly.

With all due respect to Ramnaresh Sarwan, he is not in the same class as Katich, Hughes, Ponting, Hussey and Clarke. I've seen Broad bowl over the last few months and he didn't look nearly as threatening as what Harmison was to Hughes and Ponting.

 

[fredfertang]

If that were right then on the basis Sarwan has 6 centuries and 3 half centuries in his last dozen tests England might as well give up now

 

[BoyBrumby]

He made the captian draw blood and didn't show any concern, set the tone which puts his name in the forefront of the mind when looking for a key moment in the series.

To be fair that was in the first test when he also took a Michelle, so I think is excluded from the remit of Dicko's "four tests we dominated". Not that 2 draws, a win of 2 runs and another of 3 wickets fits my definition of "dominated", but that's beside the point.

However, Dick's assertion he contributed to those four tests the sum of "sod all" is cobblers too. Who picked up Clarke with a slower ball yorker at the end of the third day in the second? & who produced the bounce that disconcerted Kasprowicz into gloving the ball to the saintly Geraint & snatch victory from the vegemite-stained jaws of defeat?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address. In the event of a tie the winner will be decided by the most inventive answer of 15 words of less to the conundrum "I think Douglas Jardine should be given a posthumous peerage because..."

 

[zaremba]

With all due respect to Ramnaresh Sarwan, he is not in the same class as Katich, Hughes, Ponting, Hussey and Clarke.

I don't want us to get side-tracked too far off topic here, but Sarwan is of similar class to all those, with the exception of Ponting who's a class above nearly every batsman I've ever seen.

Hughes is still a bit of an unknown quantity. He looks a good player, and has done well to achieve a start to his Test career which is almost as good as that of Sourav Ganguly.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

If that were right then on the basis Sarwan has 6 centuries and 3 half centuries in his last dozen tests England might as well give up now

Well his not averaging 70 in Test & First-Class cricket or 56 & 58 either.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Well his not averaging 70 in Test & First-Class cricket or 56 & 58 either.

Been playing for longer than 15 seconds tho.

Hughes looks to have something about him, no doubt, but it's way too soon to draw any conclusions about.

 

[fredfertang]

Well his not averaging 70 in Test & First-Class cricket or 56 & 58 either.

I'm expressing the view that you've underrated Sarwan rather than overrated those other gents you mentioned

 

[Uppercut]

He made the captian draw blood and didn't show any concern, set the tone which puts his name in the forefront of the mind when looking for a key moment in the series.

I don't think that moment was relevant at all. When Simon Jones, the real hero of 2005, was shattering Aussie stumps with prodigious inswing it wasn't because Steve Harmison hit Ponting on the chin a few weeks earlier.

Not that I agree with Richard's assessment of Harmison's bowling in 2005. But that moment meant nothing.

 

[Redbacks]

17 years of rocking up and taking the piss -> lunch day 1

 

[Uppercut]

They lost the match though. England went on to win at Edgebaston due to Flintoff's inspiration, aggressive first-innings batting, Harmison's crucial wickets of Clarke and Kasprowicz, Simon Jones's incredible reverse swing and a little slice of luck late in the day.

Several million miles down the list you'll find Harmison hitting Ponting on the head a while earlier that summer as a factor in why England won the game.

 

[Richard]

The point I was making is that the "picture" is an average: a number. And that sort of number doesn't necessarily mean what it appears to mean. It can only be properly understood in its proper context, which is that it's the result of an extremely careful exercise in sample-selection. And saying that someone averages (say) 48 after that process is fairly meaningless in itself unless you can compare it with similarly-selected figures for other bowlers.

You don't have to use an average - I could if you really wished go through every game and show how mostly Harmison had negligable impact on it.

As for comparing it with other bowlers - the point is you can't do it for most bowlers, because they don't have such easily divideable sets. Precious few bowlers have ever had 48 mostly diabolical Tests with 7 (consecutive) superlative ones thrown in in the middle.

 

[Richard]

The other point about Harmison (when he's bowling decently), and I don't expect you to agree with this Richard but I regard it as pretty important, is that batsmen don't like facing him. He unsettles them. This helps to build up pressure on the batting line-up. Even when he wasn't taking wickets, he was a factor in the success of the England team in 2005.

You might be surprised to hear I don't dispute this at all. It is useful to have a bowler who unsettles batsmen - though I'll always prefer one who gets them out, by miles - but the mists of time have obscured things. Harmison didn't do this in 2005. Look at the last four Tests - he was occasionally whistled-up for a 4 or 5 over spell of waywardness to loosen the stranglehold on the Australians before being banished again for a lengthy period as one of Flintoff and Giles (at Edgbaston); Flintoff and Jones (at Old Trafford); Hoggard and Jones (at Trent Bridge); or Hoggard and Flintoff (at The Oval) put the batsmen under the pump once again.

Something I've long thought about the 2005 series is that England's "pack" of bowlers is hopelessly overstated. In any one given Test, only two bowlers at most were ever bowling well - the rest were complete passengers. Actually looking back at the footage, you realise this; just looking at the names and knowing what they were about (ie, Harmison bounce with no movement; Hoggard swing and not much bounce; Flintoff bounce and both swing; Jones skiddy and both swing; Giles spin) you can say "it was a varied attack that always offered something every spell".